The news last week that city taxpayers so far have spent more than $686,500 in legal fees, for two Charter Board cases against Mayor Vaughn Spencer, raises a question:

What else could it have bought? Here's a sampling:

More than 6,800 wintertime pothole repairs.

Six cops for a year, or eight firefighters.

Repaving 13 blocks of two-lane city streets.

Buying 12,000 tons of salt (good salt this time, that actually gets on city streets).

About 17 months of city funds to Reading Recreation Commission programs.

More than 80,000 hours of pay for the city's school crossing guards.

Or, in a perspective Spencer would appreciate, hiring a communications director for more than 10 years.

That legal cost on Monday got City Council and the mayor to agree - it's too much.

Council President Francis Acosta said council didn't like it but had to pay the bill.

He said the mayor's four attorneys from the Duane Morris law firm - each charging $380 an hour - actually gave the city a $140,000 discount.

But the discounted bill still was $470,000.

The Charter Board spent $216,000 on it own legal fees.

Some noted that Acosta got a $1,000 campaign contribution from Duane Morris. Acosta said it had no impact on his vote to pay the bill.

Speaking to council earlier, city volunteer Melvyn Jacobson said he was dismayed by the city's waste of money.

"This is a public embarrassment, and it really needs to stop now," Jacobson said.

Spencer agreed the cost was too high.

"It didn't have to happen," Spencer said.

But Spencer believes the reason the cost went up is because the Charter Board, which lost in Berks County Court, appealed to Commonwealth Court.

In fact, at a December news conference in which Spencer said a local ruling vindicated him, his assistant Eron Lloyd insisted the appeals have to stop, that City Council has got to rein in the appeals.

Uhh, hold on there a moment. Sure, the board appealed. But Spencer appealed the Charter Board rulings to Berks County Court, to which he also appealed the state Office of Open Records order to disclose how much he'd spent on the cases.

And he's appealed a Commonwealth Court ruling the city recycling fee is illegal.